From our Hives to your Home

Welcome to the Ranch… the Bee Ranch 🐝

We are Paul and Cadie VanTongeren.
Paul always dreamed of raising cattle, but nine years ago we started keeping bees and I joked that this must be our ranch… our livestock just turned out a lot smaller than he planned.

You know when you have a grand idea that something will be fun, but you have absolutely no clue how much work, sweat, and frustration it actually takes?
That was beekeeping for me.

I promise I only cried once… the summer we worked so hard building up our strongest hive and then they swarmed and took my honey with them. Beekeepers understand that heartbreak.

We’ve gone from truly terrible beekeepers (who accidentally killed more hives than we care to admit) to finally having some success and enjoying the process along the way.

Beekeeping has taught us patience, resilience, humility, and a deep appreciation for how incredible God’s design really is. Every season is different, and the bees always have something new to teach us.

As we continue to grow, we thought it would be fun to share our journey with you and let you learn from our mistakes (so you don’t have to make all of them yourself).

Ask ten beekeepers the same question and you’ll get ten different answers, which can feel overwhelming when you’re learning. My goal is to simplify things by sharing what we’ve learned through mentors, research, trial-and-error, and plenty of mistakes all to help you have success each season.

Each month I’ll share what we’re doing in the apiary: how we prepare for upcoming seasons and what tasks we focus on during the busy months.

We’re located in Whitehall, Michigan (Zone 6a), so February still feels like deep winter here. I always joke that we treat our bees like they live in Alaska, even though we aren’t quite that cold, our season is short, and we make sure they have plenty of food and warmth to make it through.

Welcome to the Bee Ranch. We’re glad you’re here.

Cadie